Wrapping up the shop (interior)

Finish work is always slower, but we kept plugging away at the shop into the fall and it's pretty well wrapped up now, except for exterior siding, which isn't going to happen until next year.  So here's a tour of that work.

First, drywall.  Here's the front portion (the garage) all sheetrocked and ready for taping.  We did the rock ourselves, but I won't even try taping on this scale as it is a skill that takes lots of time to learn, and I am not good at it. 

 And the rear portion (the shop)

 It is always good to have help.  Here my helper was taping electric boxes to the vapor barrier to seal them up.

The guy I hired to tape the shop took a bit over a week to do it all.  He worked alone too.  I couldn't have done it in a month or two, and it would have looked bad.  First coat here was all I got photos of.

 Then I painted it.  2 coats of basic white primer/paint.  I bought an airless sprayer for doing the house, so this was the first tryout of it.  It got quite a workout as this came to about 50 gallons of paint.

This is mid September, and getting it painted was a huge relief as it now allowed to start moving some things in.  I had to wrap up final electric by wiring in all the outlets and getting lights in place too, but that goes fairly easy for me, even if it does take time.  I did that over the next couple weeks and the lights arrived and we put those up.  High output T5 fluorescent lights I got from a local commercial shop that I found through my neighbor (friend of his).  They are great lights and were cheaper in the end than I could buy at Home Depot or elsewhere.  Good quality stuff - very impressed.  Here is a pic of the lighting and the tractor finally being able to be parked inside for the first time.

After that I turned my attention to getting the radiant floor heat going.  Here are two shots of the whole system.  The heater is just a tankless water heater on the wall to the left (beige box with the big yellow sticker with the stainless exhaust vent going up and out from it).  The heat/pump controls are on top in the middle (I hadn't wired them up when I took this), with the 2 pumps directly below them (1 for garage, 1 for shop).  The other equipment on the plywood to the right is the internet/phone service for the property.  All utilities come into the shop first, then get distributed from there.

Here is the system fully wired and during filling.  Since we don't have water going at the site yet, I just got a big 40 gal tub and filled it from buckets I brought from home.  I picked up a cheap submersible pump to do the job.  It took about 30 gal to fill the system but went pretty quick - a couple hours at most. This was right after I finished filling (Nov 10).  I just fired up the heat yesterday (Nov 15) after getting the final inspection sign off on it, so now...finally... I have a warm shop to work in.  I set it to mid 60's to start, and will see how it stabilizes over the next few days.

I have gotten bad at updates and taking photos lately as I have been way too busy.  The framers wrapped up the house a couple weeks back, and I have working like mad to get things enclosed and ready for insulation.  The project was delayed too much and now I am up against winter without insulation or heat completed in the house yet.  We're trying to get there, but the weather has not helped, and we are running out of time before winter.  Some of the foam insulation cannot be sprayed if it gets too cold so that is a big issue driving this.  There is only so fast you can go doing this part time...

So there will be more updates coming on the house, but I need time to make it happen, and am under the gun with winter approaching.  We'll get there, but it takes time... Pray for a late start to winter!

Late update:  And finally we have heat!  Nov 15th was a big day as a lot of things got finalized then - we got power fully connected to the house, the garage doors got installed, and we fired up the heat in the shop finally.  Yes, there were a few inspections that day to allow all this...

Here is the shop heat coming up to temp.  It took overnight to get warm, but it is nice now.

 Kind of a long way from here, ya think?

More House framing - Getting closer!

The framers continued working on the remainder of the shell, which mainly included the roof sections.  The upper level and the MBR end were trussed and went pretty quick.  The great room and the attached porches/decks were a bit trickier than the trussed sections, so this is a bit slower going.

Here are a few shots of the roof framing work.  There is also a bunch of detail framing that never shows up in pictures:  Things like truss hold-downs and various hangers and brackets that take a good amount of time to install but are critical to the structure.  All that is going on in the background.

Upper level roof trusses 9-25-13

Upper level roof sheathing 9-26-13

Upper level roof and MBR roof sheathed 9-27-13

Great room I-joist rafters, West side 9-30-13

Great room I-joist rafters, Both sides, 9-30-13

Upper level and MBR wing roof waterproofed 10-2-13

Great room roof sheathed and waterproofed 10-3-13.  This was a big push by the crew.  They stayed late, basically until dark, to complete this as major rain was forecasted for that night and the next several days.  The weather did not disappoint as we got probably 3"+ of rain over that time.  We needed the rain, but it made a mess of the site, of course. The deck area needs to be completed on the front and the front entry.  These are the main areas of work coming up.

 Great room from the inside

That is pretty much everything on the house to get us up to date.  The framers expect to finish up main framing in the next week or so, and we can get a final roof on it within about 2 weeks.  Windows arrive around Oct 9 and will get installed as the weather and time permits over the next few weeks.  We are doing the windows, so after framing is done we are pretty much on our own, except for plumbing and a few other things.  I have a few more updates to post in the near future, but then it is going to slow down quite a bit as 1 guy in the evenings plus a friend or two on weekends, cannot get done anywhere near as much as an experienced crew working full days all week. Plus, finish work is always more time consuming than framing and rough work.

We are also now running into the problem of delays adding up and causing trouble as winter is rapidly approaching and it is going to be very hard to get the place weather-tight and insulated and HEATED in time.  If it isn't heated by early Dec, it will be a problem, and that is going to be very hard to do.

I will show a few things completed on the shop next.  That is in finish work stage which is much slower, as noted.

Main SIPs Framing of House

The SIPs panels for the rest of the house finally arrived in the afternoon of Sept 17, 2013.  The crew was working on some other details like stair framing and so all they did was get them unloaded and stacked on Tues.

Pictures of all the panels stacked up:

Then on Wed Sept 18, the crew started raising the walls on the main level.  This goes amazingly fast.  Here is the result of 1 day of work with 4 guys.

 Also after day 1, the great room/kitchen area:

 Thurs was Day 2, and progress was limited due to heavy rain (much needed as it has been very dry for 2+ months, but bad timing for us...) Main floor walls are about 3/4 done here:

They finished the main level on Fri Sept 20 (day 3) and installed top plates and other details (no pic).  The roof trusses and The Big Beam showed up Fri also.  Roof trusses:

 The beam is wrapped to protect it:

Also on Fri, the gas company showed up to put in the main gas line to the meter location:

That Friday was an extremely busy day!  I was working on getting the interior of the shop ready to paint while all of this was going on.  I'll cover that in a future post.



Mon Sept 23 they did the second floor deck, which was a bit of a struggle due to a beam not fitting the way they expected, but they got the floor trusses in and the deck all framed up.

Today  (Sept 24) was Day 5 of the SIPs framing, and they made great progress.  The entire upper level is complete and they also got The Big Beam in place, along with the post for the upper balcony.

You can see the beam (still wrapped) in the great room to the left of the upper level:

 From the back side showing the balcony post:

 Another view of the post and a couple framing members holding it in place:

Another view of The Big Beam in the great room.

So in 5 days, they completed all the main level and upper level wall framing, plus the upper level floor deck and started on the roof beam structure.  Great progress in a short time.  That's all for now.

Trench warfare

The utilities (electric, gas, fiber optic) all come into the shop as that was the first building to go up.  We obviously have to get these run to the house.  The well is over by the house.  I also need water out to the shop.  So we needed a trench.  With a water pipe, we needed to make it deep enough to prevent freezing, so it was dug 6' deep to start, and the water line was laid in as we went.  That runs under the house footing, along with 2 electrical conduits we put in before backfilling the foundation.  So the water line is 6' down and the excavator rolled the pipe out (plastic) and then backfilled over it ~2 feet as he went.  Then the conduits for electrical and low voltage wires went in with a little backfill, followed by the gas pipe.

This was a brutal weekend.  The first point is the distance.  It is ~320' from end to end.  Then the electric service wire is huge and heavy and very inflexible.  It was a 2-man job to get the wire in the conduit, which was also massive 3" stuff (and also heavy).  This was exhausting work, but it is finally done and the trench filled back in.

Here is the trench with the water line already buried and ready for conduit.

Unrolling the massive electric service wire.  400 lbs worth on the spool! Tractor to the rescue.

 Unrolling it along the driveway

 Fully unspooled and ready to lift into the trench

Overview fro the shop with the conduit complete.  It's a looong way to the house! Power is the large one on the left, low voltage the smaller one on the right.

 Looking reversed towards the shop

 Where the conduits and water pipe go under the house foundation.  You can see the blue water pipe poking out at the bottom.

 Where they end at the shop.  I need to get them connected to the main meter panel soon.

Now it's all covered up and waiting for a more final grade.  No pics of that right now.  That's all for now, and brings everything up to date!

Drywalling the shop

It took a couple weeks to get Sheetrock up.  I did most of the ceiling solo, and had help from my friend Brook for the walls.  I used a drywall lift for the ceiling, and the newer "lightweight" drywall made this a lot easier to do.  I don't think I could lift 12' sheet of regular drywall onto the lift, but the lightweight stuff was manageable (but still heavy).  The ceiling took close to 2 weeks, but like I said it was mostly solo.  Thee walls we did in 2.5 days.  It was a lot of work, but we had a good system.  We ran seams vertical as the SIPs panels don't need the extra stiffness form running them horizontal like typical framed construction.  This made it a little challenging to get them into place, but we made a simple frame from 2x4s to support them as we tilted them up.  Would have been impossible solo, but worked well with 2 guys.

Here was putting up the plastic vapor barrier before Sheetrock.  My friend tom helped with this. He's tall.  That helped a lot :-)

Here's my highly skilled helper taping off electrical boxes to the vapor barrier

Not a ton of pics of the drywall job.  It's drywall, you know what it looks like... These are near the end.

 Then I hired out the taping and mudding.  Sometimes, I actually do know where my limits are, and this is one.  I am lousy at it, and it would have taken forever to do it, so I got a guy that Brook had used previously with great reviews on Angie's list to do it.  It took him about a week to wrap it up.  I can only imagine how long it would have taken me...  He wrapped up last weekend 9-14-13.

Now I'm wrapping up final interior details and masking to get ready to paint this weekend.  Then I can get lights up and FINALLY be able to use it without having to keep it all cleared out all the time to allow this work to proceed...

House framing - lower level

Lower level interior framing for bearing walls started late Aug as we were waiting for the wall SIPs panels to show up.  They have been running behind a lot, but they finally showed up just after Labor Day.  This was only a partial shipment that included the lower level panels, but that helped keep things moving.

The interior walls done and waiting for SIPs to show up...

What's that in the distance?  Looks like a SIPs panel!

It is!  That is the stairwell wall.  Due to the large windows in the stairwell, they wanted to frame it with continuous posts from ground to top, so the whole 28' tall section was raised in one piece.  The framer (Roger) said it was a lot of fun...  You can see the lower SIPs walls almost done here.

And the next day they were completed with the garage door wall, and they got the steel beams in place.

 Another view.

No pictures of the floor trusses going up, but that was next.  It was pretty quick.

Then, while waiting for the main level SIPs to show up, they framed up the screen porch/deck floor, and then laid the floor sheathing out.  This was Sept 12, 2013. 

They did a little more interior framing but were basically waiting for the upper level panels to show up at this point.  They finally arrived on Tues Sept 16, so main level framing is underway.  I'll post some updates on that in a few days. Next up is some work on the shop and the trench for utilities.